Coquitlam’s Wesley Berg scored three times, including the above marker and overtime winner, to help No. 4 seeded Denver upset No. 1 Notre Dame 11-10 in extra time at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Saturday and advance to the NCAA championship on Monday.
Tyler Pace, also of Coquitlam, had two goals and two assists, for Denver.
Denver will meet either No. 6 Maryland or unseeded John Hopkins in championship game. They were playing in the other semifinal.
Denver took a 10-6 lead with 4:23 to go on a Berg marker, but Notre Dame stormed back and knotted the score at 10-10 with nine seconds remaining, on a goal by Nick Ossello.
Berg scored, off Pace feed, with 2:03 left in the extra session. It was his 53rd goal of the season.
Berg and Pace helped the Coquitlam Adanacs to a spot in the Minto Cup, Canada’s national Junior A box lacrosse finals, last season. They lost to Ontario champion Six Nations.
Berg is in his senior campaign and he’s a finalist for the Tewaaraton Award, which goes to the NCAA’s best player each season. The Denver Post had an extended feature on him on Saturday. And his play Saturday was getting all sorts of attention on Twitter, including from Curtis Dickson, the Port Coquitlam native who is one of the game’s best players. He’s leading the Calgary Roughnecks up against the Edmonton Roughnecks in the National Lacrosse League playoffs currently.
Berg is expected to be an early pick in this fall’s NLL draft.
